


The Taste Was Not So Sweet

by MooseFeels



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Hurt Dean Winchester, Hurt/Comfort, chubby!Dean
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-03
Updated: 2013-01-03
Packaged: 2017-11-23 12:01:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/621906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MooseFeels/pseuds/MooseFeels





	The Taste Was Not So Sweet

There was a period of time there, for a while, when Dean looked sick.

They were just coming off the road, and it was like everything caught up with him. The years of stress and work and pain and hurt hit him, all at once.

His weight plummeted, suddenly, hard. He lost forty pounds in three weeks, and it kept dropping and dropping. It got to a point where Castiel could count all of his ribs, where the bones on his fingers stood out sharp, where his hair started to grey a bit.

Dark circles fell under his eyes, no matter how long he slept.

He slept for days.

And Castiel did the only thing he knew to, fallen and human and helpless.

Castiel held him, tight and close. Held him even though he felt so fragile he was sure Dean would break.

He didn’t talk, and when he did, his voice cracked around his words.

Cracked around words like, “I’m sorry.” Words like, “I don’t know.”

And then one morning Castiel woke up to an empty bed, body curled around nothing and the sound of a shower echoing from the bathroom.

Dean’s cheekbones and jaw were sharp and tight, bones so hard they looked like they would slice through his skin, which was paling and loosing freckling.

And Dean said, small and skinny and pale and sick and tired, “Can we go for a drive?”

His hands shook so badly, he didn’t even argue when Castiel took the wheel. He was so weak, he barely made it out to the car.

They drove, fast and bright and hard, the radio loud. Drove with Robert Plant’s voice bleeding out of their windows, drove until Dean said, “Can we stop at a diner?’

Watching the starlight sharp point of pie disappear into Dean’s grey mouth, watching the slow bliss of cherry dissolve over his face was a better lesson in Hope or Faith than anything his brothers had ever said.

And very slowly, Dean stopped looking so sick.

He started falling asleep under the sun, and his color came back with his freckles. He started talking again in a halting, soft voice. He started singing again. He started eating again, very slowly, a little bit at a time. Some days, he had three whole meals, and some days he had a cup of juice.

Some days just the blissful bite of the point of pie from the diner they soon began to think of as theirs.

And by the end of that first year, the pain that had come first had been eased away, the only reminder the shock of grey hair that stayed at Dean’s temples.

One morning, Castiel eased down the stairs of the house that had become theirs over the year to the smell of pancakes.

It was the first time Dean had ever cooked for him.

And as he handed the plate of mis-shapen, slightly burnt flapjacks to Castiel he kissed him. “Thank you,” he murmured. “Thank you for putting up with me.”

They made love, there, on the kitchen floor, Dean covered in flour and Castiel smelling like sleep.

The pancakes, over time, got better, and Dean, over time, gained a little extra weight.

Castiel began to notice it in the way Dean’s ribs didn’t dig into him when he lay across him, when he hugged him, when he held him at night.

Dean noticed it in the way his belt was loosened a bit and the way his pants tightened a bit.

He got out of the shower, one morning, and stood in the bedroom, in his boxers. He poked and squeezed and what had become his belly and he wrinkled his nose with distaste.

“Don’t,” Castiel said lazily from the bed.

“What?” Dean asked.

Castiel sat up, eased over to the edge of the bed and brought Dean into his space. Laid his hands over the rounded pudge of Dean’s belly and his head on Dean’s chest.

“You’re beautiful,” he said.

Dean rolled his eyes, pulled to move away, but Castiel twined his fingers into Dean’s and rested his forehead against his plump stomach. “Please,” Dean said, derisively. “I’m going soft.”

“You’ve earned soft,” Castiel whispered.

“And you’ve earned pretty,” Dean answered.

Castiel looked up into Dean’s eyes. “Do you really think that?” He asked, horrified. “Dean, you look…you will always be perfect to me.”

Hands still entwined with Castiel’s, Dean pet Castiel’s hair.

“You deserve better,” he said.

“Beloved, I _have_ the best,” Casitel answered.

He stood and he kissed him.

And he held him close, beautiful and perfect and strong and soft, pudge of his belly pushed against his hipbones.


End file.
